Eh, toss get the best early harassment in the game in the form of the probe. Continued on into early game - they can poke bunkers with stalkers and run away, recharge shield, and then continue.
Ghosts are ridiculously expensive, take a long time to build, and need at least 25 seconds to have enough for an emp.
Like...ghosts just aren't that broken and toss have plenty of ways to respond to them. I know because I lose to toss players on fairly regular occasions. You basically need to deviate from your tech path just to make a unique building dedicated to ghosts - and that building and the unit itself are mineral and gas intensive.
They are pretty much useful only because of emp in the TvP match up (snipe/cloak is arguably useful to kill HT, but requires VERY good micro) - so what you do is you engage outside of your base, force him to use it if he's pushing early game, back off, recharge shield, and then laugh - because in order to get that ghost and push early he had to sacrifice either army or econ.
I'll agree that Toss has best harassment. If you don't kill any probe you see you'll get a UPIA.
The costs seem about right, a little more than DTs, maybe my problem with them is how quickly you can get to them. I don't know. Weren't they a very late-game unit in BW?
I'm guessing that the SC2 as a whole won't be balanced until all 3 packs are out, and several patches post protoss pack. Until then, I think that we're going to be dealing with frustrating imbalances, no matter the tweaks to unit stats.
Eh, toss get the best early harassment in the game in the form of the probe. Continued on into early game - they can poke bunkers with stalkers and run away, recharge shield, and then continue.
Ghosts are ridiculously expensive, take a long time to build, and need at least 25 seconds to have enough for an emp.
Like...ghosts just aren't that broken and toss have plenty of ways to respond to them. I know because I lose to toss players on fairly regular occasions. You basically need to deviate from your tech path just to make a unique building dedicated to ghosts - and that building and the unit itself are mineral and gas intensive.
They are pretty much useful only because of emp in the TvP match up (snipe/cloak is arguably useful to kill HT, but requires VERY good micro) - so what you do is you engage outside of your base, force him to use it if he's pushing early game, back off, recharge shield, and then laugh - because in order to get that ghost and push early he had to sacrifice either army or econ.
I'll agree that Toss has best harassment. If you don't kill any probe you see you'll get a UPIA.
The costs seem about right, a little more than DTs, maybe my problem with them is how quickly you can get to them. I don't know. Weren't they a very late-game unit in BW?
I'm guessing that the SC2 as a whole won't be balanced until all 3 packs are out, and several patches post protoss pack. Until then, I think that we're going to be dealing with frustrating imbalances, no matter the tweaks to unit stats.
They were late game, but were fundamentally different in how they were used (pretty much rarely).
They cost 25 minerals, 75 gas and the fundamental difference once again is that in order to get them, you had to make a building that built not only ghosts, but Science Vessels, had a variety of upgrades, allowed you to get additional tech branches etc.
But they compensated in sc2 by making the ghost facility an out of the way tech that makes you sacrifice not only your army, but the ability to tech to factories/starports.
As far as balance - yes, we get to pay for blizzard's money grab.
1. I tend to undervalue my opening timings, does it make a large difference in the game? I rarely feel like if I had 2 more lings I'd have won, it's usually more like, I have 100 food and nothing I have can deal with the terran army
thanks again sir! helpful advice
Late to the party, but openings are incredibly important. Army survival increases exponentially as food differences occur. As long as you're keeping pressure on an enemy, you will continue to magnify your army food advantage until you can wreck your opponent's face.
A 6 on 6 zergling fight will result in (on average) neither side ending up with an advantage. However, having 2 more zerglings will result in you walking away with 3-4 more zerglings. Then next time you fight after 5 larva pop, instead of it being 10 on 10, you're at 14 on 10. This time you've got 8-10 zerglings left over. Next time you fight, instead of it being 20 on 20, it'll be 30 on 20, making an even bigger margin. That'll leave you with an extra 15-20 left over, more than enough to crush someone's base.
Note however, in order to get this exponential increase, you need to bring your army against his at every opportunity. Having a 1 food advantage when it's 4 food vs 3 food is huge, and can easily win you the game. Waiting until it's 101/200 vs 100/200 is worthless. You need to keep pressing against the opponent and forcing him to sacrifice units to your larger army. That's how you maintain the advantage.
Man, as much as zerg could use some help right now (and they are getting help so woo) SC2 is still like the second most balanced RTS out there, second only to BW.
Well, I tried a bunch of new builds today and lost seven consecutive games. There just doesn't seem to be much variety at this level; either you do what is known to work or you lose. I guess if you get really good there seems to be more variety, but I'm never going to be a pro so that's irrelevant.
I guess I'm just getting bored of StarCraft. At least Civ V will be out soon!
Man, I just cannot play a bunch of games in one session. My games always seem to last at least 20 minutes, and I just feel physically exhausted after each one.
Beat another Platinum guy, though. It was especially nice since these were the opening comments of the game:
Not sure that I have the balls to expand before pool, though. I'm watching a 2 hour recording of his live stream where does this and the first match is him containing a Terran. It's amazing to watch.
Watching the replay, he's actually pretty terrible. He just went 3 rax Marine/Marauder and pushed a few times. Didn't get a Factory for the first 16 minutes. He had 22 SCVs at the 15-minute mark. When he took his natural, he transferred every single SCV there even though his main still had plenty of patches left. He managed to hit 200 energy with only a single Orbital Command.
Despite all of that, I just barely managed to hold off his first push.
I watched your game he wasn't that bad, he was too focused on microing his bioball though, which is obviously only going to take you so far.
I liked your expanding, didn't like you getting supply blocked or not macroing during a lot of fights! Not mining gas at your expo was a bit weird. You should use sentries more against bio it stuffs them so bad. Your cheese scouting was good too, don't forget the destructible rocks in the middle just outside your main ramp though I've seen a lot of korean replays put rax there.
Thanks for the tips. I must have just completely forgotten to put Probes on gas at my expos. Whoops. I don't normally make that mistake. I was intending on going Chargelot-heavy so my available gas seemed normal. And yeah, my macro can certainly be improved a great deal. I think I pretty much stopped bothering at the end there as I thought I'd won, which is a mistake. I definitely need to play more games so that I can get used to multitasking.
I scouted for cheese purely because of what he said at the start. :P
His Corkiness on
0
Tkenpost-CSL January 2012 Partycraft 6th Place WinnerRegistered Userregular
edited September 2010
I'm currently on a 24 game winning streak against Protoss and Terran. At 1k+ Diamond. The games have not been close.
Have we talked about 5 Roach Rush enough? Probably. But lemme give it one more go. :P
Please try this build if you're struggling with these matchups as Zerg! You will not be disappointed. Here's the exact strategy that I've been using:
9 OL
13 Pool
13 Gas
15 OL
15 Zergling, make sure there's no scout in your base and then guard the ramp
16 Queen
18 Drone
19 Drone
Shortly after this drone you should have 100 gas; get Metabolic Boost
After starting that research, build a Roach Warren the moment you hit 150 minerals. At this time your Queen should be ~75% done.
As soon as Queen pops, inject and then make an OL (will need to wait a second for minerals, but that's fine)
If you don't know where your opponent is at this point, say farewell to a ling. You don't need to scout with a drone but you gotta find out somehow.
At this point you should be at 19 food (the Warren was made on 20). If you've timed everything perfectly, your larva injection will go off right as your Roach Warren finishes right as your OL spawns and right as you get 125 gas (128, actually). Reinject immediately, then make your 5 Roaches, rallied to your opponent's natural. Follow this up with one OL once you have the minerals (should take ~3 seconds).
Take all drones off gas. Send one to your natural so that you can expand quickly if your rush fails.
From now on your only macro goal is to keep up with injections and food while spamming zerglings rallied to your opponent's base. This should use up all of your minerals. By time your roaches are 1/3rd of the way to your opponent, speed will finish, allowing your mass of zerglings (from the second injection) to arrive fashionably late to the bust. By time your roaches arrive, you should have 18 lings on the field.
Once you're at his base, you want to immediately get your 5 roaches to his wall and knock out the weakest part of it. This is going to be either a supply depot or Zealot(s). Once you've made an opening, all your speedlings pour in and end the game. Play it smart: set your rally to inside his base, keep up with injections, don't suicide lings onto workers. Take out pylons powering gateways. Attack marauders and stalkers with lings, marines and zealots with roaches. Try to keep everything alive, but don't worry about losing your roaches when breaking in; if you make a hole in his wall, they did their job and your lings can win it.
If he manages to prevent you from getting through the wall by having some unholy number of marauders or stalkers, expand and transition however you will. I'm not going to say that you're ahead of him at this point, but you won't be too far behind. That being said, you should very rarely be failing to make a hole; if it's more than 1 in 10 games you should examine why that is.
Welp, that's about it. I'll try to get some new replays up tomorrow of the games I played tonight. Also, because I hate when people leave this out of strategies: I strongly recommend a thumbs down on Desert Oasis, Scrap Station, and Kulas Ravine due to the long rush distances.
Hope this helps some Zergie buddies. If anyone has advice/questions/criticisms about the build I'd love to hear it. Also, I did not of course come up with this build, a guy named Fistdantilus did. I have made some slight alterations to the timing and modified the transition to be all-in zerglings instead of a FE.
Reapers should be able from a reactor barracks as long as you have at least one other rax with a tech lab on it. I would see them being more viable late game in terms of mustering and giving Terran mobility in the late game which it currently lacks and making reapers a viable unit outside of the first 5-6 minutes.
Reapers should be able from a reactor barracks as long as you have at least one other rax with a tech lab on it. I would see them being more viable late game in terms of mustering and giving Terran mobility in the late game which it currently lacks and making reapers a viable unit outside of the first 5-6 minutes.
Protoss has its warp in and zerg have mutas.
A thought.
Bah. They should just give them the upgrade they had in campaign, albeit a little nerfed. Have it require an factory or an armory or something.
Ok this is just fascinating to me now. I know it doesn't make a lick of difference at my skill level. It's just impressive how the top Terrans have taken the ball and run with it.
I'm currently on a 24 game winning streak against Protoss and Terran. At 1k+ Diamond. The games have not been close.
Have we talked about 5 Roach Rush enough? Probably. But lemme give it one more go. :P
Please try this build if you're struggling with these matchups as Zerg! You will not be disappointed. Here's the exact strategy that I've been using:
9 OL
13 Pool
13 Gas
15 OL
15 Zergling, make sure there's no scout in your base and then guard the ramp
16 Queen
18 Drone
19 Drone
Shortly after this drone you should have 100 gas; get Metabolic Boost
After starting that research, build a Roach Warren the moment you hit 150 minerals. At this time your Queen should be ~75% done.
As soon as Queen pops, inject and then make an OL (will need to wait a second for minerals, but that's fine)
If you don't know where your opponent is at this point, say farewell to a ling. You don't need to scout with a drone but you gotta find out somehow.
At this point you should be at 19 food (the Warren was made on 20). If you've timed everything perfectly, your larva injection will go off right as your Roach Warren finishes right as your OL spawns and right as you get 125 gas (128, actually). Reinject immediately, then make your 5 Roaches, rallied to your opponent's natural. Follow this up with one OL once you have the minerals (should take ~3 seconds).
Take all drones off gas. Send one to your natural so that you can expand quickly if your rush fails.
From now on your only macro goal is to keep up with injections and food while spamming zerglings rallied to your opponent's base. This should use up all of your minerals. By time your roaches are 1/3rd of the way to your opponent, speed will finish, allowing your mass of zerglings (from the second injection) to arrive fashionably late to the bust. By time your roaches arrive, you should have 18 lings on the field.
Once you're at his base, you want to immediately get your 5 roaches to his wall and knock out the weakest part of it. This is going to be either a supply depot or Zealot(s). Once you've made an opening, all your speedlings pour in and end the game. Play it smart: set your rally to inside his base, keep up with injections, don't suicide lings onto workers. Take out pylons powering gateways. Attack marauders and stalkers with lings, marines and zealots with roaches. Try to keep everything alive, but don't worry about losing your roaches when breaking in; if you make a hole in his wall, they did their job and your lings can win it.
If he manages to prevent you from getting through the wall by having some unholy number of marauders or stalkers, expand and transition however you will. I'm not going to say that you're ahead of him at this point, but you won't be too far behind. That being said, you should very rarely be failing to make a hole; if it's more than 1 in 10 games you should examine why that is.
Welp, that's about it. I'll try to get some new replays up tomorrow of the games I played tonight. Also, because I hate when people leave this out of strategies: I strongly recommend a thumbs down on Desert Oasis, Scrap Station, and Kulas Ravine due to the long rush distances.
Hope this helps some Zergie buddies. If anyone has advice/questions/criticisms about the build I'd love to hear it. Also, I did not of course come up with this build, a guy named Fistdantilus did. I have made some slight alterations to the timing and modified the transition to be all-in zerglings instead of a FE.
I gave the 5rr a ton of chances. Isn't nearly as effective as people give it credit for. Stopped sooooo easily.
It's GREAT if they're going marine/hellion...but I honestly can't remember the last time I've seen a terran do that vs me. Early marauders 24/7.
Ezekiel on
I will throw you on the land and hurl you on the open field. I will let all the birds of the air settle on you and all the beasts of the earth gorge themselves on you. I will spread your flesh on the mountains and fill the valleys with your remains. I will drench the land with your flowing blood all the way to the mountains, and the ravines will be filled with your flesh. - Ezekiel 32: 4-6
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Man nothing puts you off your game when you get a phone call for an interview in the middle of your match.
Yeah it's the game you should be worrying about then.
Ezekiel on
I will throw you on the land and hurl you on the open field. I will let all the birds of the air settle on you and all the beasts of the earth gorge themselves on you. I will spread your flesh on the mountains and fill the valleys with your remains. I will drench the land with your flowing blood all the way to the mountains, and the ravines will be filled with your flesh. - Ezekiel 32: 4-6
I really want this game. It looks fun. Been watching commentated replays. Sucks being a responsible adult sometimes. Maybe I could borrow my brother's copy if he's not playing very often. Don't really want to play under his battle.net login though.
SkyCaptain on
The RPG Bestiary - Dangerous foes and legendary monsters for D&D 4th Edition
0
Tkenpost-CSL January 2012 Partycraft 6th Place WinnerRegistered Userregular
edited September 2010
I'm curious: for you guys that don't find 5RR effective, are you experiencing the same timings I describe in the build order? Do you have roaches at his base around 6 minutes in-game time? What is preventing you from taking out a supply depot or their zealot plug?
I'm curious: for you guys that don't find 5RR effective, are you experiencing the same timings I describe in the build order? Do you have roaches at his base around 6 minutes in-game time? What is preventing you from taking out a supply depot or their zealot plug?
I'm guessing that for FoieGras there are a few major issues:
a) In Gold league Marauders seem to be the bread and butter of every Terran, to the point where they sometimes forget to make Marines and stuff. Hard to break a wall when your unit is countered by what's behind the wall.
b) His timings may not be tight enough, or the map may prevent a good enough timing. I have only once been able to get a perfectly timed 5RR off myself.
I have only played a handful of 1v1 ladder games, but the only losses with 5RR were me being dumb and not realizing I did actually have the advantage (like a 4 gate toss that lost all his zealots, then went mass stalker, but didn't re-close his choke - I let him push into my base instead of running lings in). I have easily defeated non-aggressive 2 gate and every Terran seems to not know WTF to do when their wall breaks that early.
I've really been losing my composure in ladder games lately and making bad calls.
I got beat by a DT toss, followed by a mass voidray toss. Both (BOTH!) I should have figured out from my scouting (I actually was bunkered in to the VR toss base, shooting his stargate with a tank instead of overruning it with marines) but decided to be cute and tech instead of just killing them. That one should be stamped on my brain for a while (after beating a teching VR toss yesterday by building nothing but marines and hellions).
Next two games I solidly beat 4 gate openings with well timed pushes. I'm still working on it, but I've been focusing on upgrades on a low gas terran infantry army with changing the timing of the push to match the map.
Steps of war, I pushed in early (right at expansion time) and build a fall-back bunker that saved the push (while expanding myself of course).
Metalopolis, we spawned opposite corners. I timed my push with the first dropship coming out (had stim and +1/+1 at that point -the armor finished RIGHT as I was engaging, so the timing was as close as I could pull it). His immortal wouldn't owned if I had gone marauder heavy, but a few extra stalkers may have made more of a difference.
I want to play random, but am only going about 50/50 in platinum as it is. I just need to bite the bullet and spend a few nights getting pwned. That said, I've been destroying my non zerg gold-level friends with 5RR zerg variations. And haven't gotten anything but toss v toss by playing random with people I know. And that matchup bugs the hell out of me (I'm not very good at microing zealots, so I usually try to dance until I get hallucinate researched on a few sentries and then use that to try and break them as my 3 attempts at 4 warpgate have been far from flawless).
Re: Reaper past early game
They are very map dependent past early game. Big maps are good, but maps with lots of ledges are even better (alot of space platform style maps).
Midgame, they're great for grabbing towers, harassing expansions, and scouting. They can't stand and fight, and are too expensive to be used as fodder, and are pretty much quickly replaced on open maps by hellions, as the barracks WILL be used to pump out more versatile marines, and better mid-game marauders.
My problem is that half the time I blow it with reapers midgame. They end up doing something cute, like taking out a few gatherers or an extractor, or making the enemy dance back into their main. I basically try top use them like a zerg uses mutalisks, but once they've got armored units with some range, or some air, they get shut down quickly.
I think with the proposed reaper build-time nerf, and the tank being made more armor-specific, something like an expensive mid-game range upgrade (not for the anti-building charges of course) would be nice, maybe to 5.5 to make them a marine ball counter - that may be a bit much, an upgrade to a range of 5 plus one damage may be less OP. I'd say put the upgrade on the ghost academy, but that would be too quick. I'm thinking the armory would be a good spot for it tech-wise.
I'm curious: for you guys that don't find 5RR effective, are you experiencing the same timings I describe in the build order? Do you have roaches at his base around 6 minutes in-game time? What is preventing you from taking out a supply depot or their zealot plug?
I'm guessing that for FoieGras there are a few major issues:
a) In Gold league Marauders seem to be the bread and butter of every Terran, to the point where they sometimes forget to make Marines and stuff. Hard to break a wall when your unit is countered by what's behind the wall.
b) His timings may not be tight enough, or the map may prevent a good enough timing. I have only once been able to get a perfectly timed 5RR off myself.
I have only played a handful of 1v1 ladder games, but the only losses with 5RR were me being dumb and not realizing I did actually have the advantage (like a 4 gate toss that lost all his zealots, then went mass stalker, but didn't re-close his choke - I let him push into my base instead of running lings in). I have easily defeated non-aggressive 2 gate and every Terran seems to not know WTF to do when their wall breaks that early.
Why would you need to guess? I said it clearly enough. Marauders are too common.
Ezekiel on
I will throw you on the land and hurl you on the open field. I will let all the birds of the air settle on you and all the beasts of the earth gorge themselves on you. I will spread your flesh on the mountains and fill the valleys with your remains. I will drench the land with your flowing blood all the way to the mountains, and the ravines will be filled with your flesh. - Ezekiel 32: 4-6
I just got done playing this glorious match where a bunker rush just absolutely fails horribly. So it's on steppes of war and this guy tries to build a couple barracks right outside my ramp and bunker rush me...it takes some effort on my part, but I eventually repel it. This normally wouldn't be all that hilarious but this guy was a diamond player without a very impressive record, meaning he probably clawed his way up to that league solely by cheesing.
The best part is when I casually stroll in to his base to scout and find that he hasn't even walled off and doesn't know what the hell to do doing once his cheeseburger strat has failed. So I go back, calmly mass some zealots with charge, and just walk right through him. Awesome.
it gives me no small amount of pleasure knowing i beat someone who's diamond but doesn't really know how to play the game. :P
Guek on
0
TIFunkaliciousKicking back inNebraskaRegistered Userregular
edited September 2010
the nice thing about cheesers is that once you parry their strat you can just outmacro and a-move all over them with basic units
TIFunkalicious on
0
Tkenpost-CSL January 2012 Partycraft 6th Place WinnerRegistered Userregular
I'm curious: for you guys that don't find 5RR effective, are you experiencing the same timings I describe in the build order? Do you have roaches at his base around 6 minutes in-game time? What is preventing you from taking out a supply depot or their zealot plug?
I'm guessing that for FoieGras there are a few major issues:
a) In Gold league Marauders seem to be the bread and butter of every Terran, to the point where they sometimes forget to make Marines and stuff. Hard to break a wall when your unit is countered by what's behind the wall.
b) His timings may not be tight enough, or the map may prevent a good enough timing. I have only once been able to get a perfectly timed 5RR off myself.
I have only played a handful of 1v1 ladder games, but the only losses with 5RR were me being dumb and not realizing I did actually have the advantage (like a 4 gate toss that lost all his zealots, then went mass stalker, but didn't re-close his choke - I let him push into my base instead of running lings in). I have easily defeated non-aggressive 2 gate and every Terran seems to not know WTF to do when their wall breaks that early.
Why would you need to guess? I said it clearly enough. Marauders are too common.
That simply doesn't answer the question. It takes 12 seconds for one Marauder to kill one Roach and 8 seconds for 5 Roaches to kill one depot. Timing wise I do not believe it's possible for him to have more than 5 Marauders at the 6 minute mark, and on paper it would seem he'd need about 7.
Do you have any replays of Marauders preventing you from killing his depot?
I'm curious: for you guys that don't find 5RR effective, are you experiencing the same timings I describe in the build order? Do you have roaches at his base around 6 minutes in-game time? What is preventing you from taking out a supply depot or their zealot plug?
If you seriously have a 24 game win streak at 1k diamond, you don't need to say anything else to convince me.
Any problems other people are having with this is probably down to not having a tight enough execution of either the build, or the bust.
Which is probably the main reason you are doing so well with it in the first place. If you are doing this every game you will have a huge amount of practice with it. Any aggressive build that is timed down to the second will have a huge advantage over a sloppy defensive one.
I'm curious: for you guys that don't find 5RR effective, are you experiencing the same timings I describe in the build order? Do you have roaches at his base around 6 minutes in-game time? What is preventing you from taking out a supply depot or their zealot plug?
If you seriously have a 24 game win streak at 1k diamond, you don't need to say anything else to convince me.
Any problems other people are having with this is probably down to not having a tight enough execution of either the build, or the bust.
Which is probably the main reason you are doing so well with it in the first place. If you are doing this every game you will have a huge amount of practice with it. Any aggressive build that is timed down to the second will have a huge advantage over a sloppy defensive one.
I have to admit that it could also be due to the "meta game" or whatever. I hate that term. But anyway, it could be that this is a good build against the sort of strategies Diamond players use but not a good build for actually getting to Diamond in the first place. I'd buy that. It's damn consistent, though.
Posts
I think they're renting a SC2 monopoly to GSL in exchange for a big chunk of the profits, while trying to sue competitive Brood Wars out of existence.
They're a pretty active / invested partner.
I'll agree that Toss has best harassment. If you don't kill any probe you see you'll get a UPIA.
The costs seem about right, a little more than DTs, maybe my problem with them is how quickly you can get to them. I don't know. Weren't they a very late-game unit in BW?
I'm guessing that the SC2 as a whole won't be balanced until all 3 packs are out, and several patches post protoss pack. Until then, I think that we're going to be dealing with frustrating imbalances, no matter the tweaks to unit stats.
Joe's Stream.
ahh i got it. character friends.
Crovax.436 Steam: Crovaxan
They were late game, but were fundamentally different in how they were used (pretty much rarely).
They cost 25 minerals, 75 gas and the fundamental difference once again is that in order to get them, you had to make a building that built not only ghosts, but Science Vessels, had a variety of upgrades, allowed you to get additional tech branches etc.
But they compensated in sc2 by making the ghost facility an out of the way tech that makes you sacrifice not only your army, but the ability to tech to factories/starports.
As far as balance - yes, we get to pay for blizzard's money grab.
oh goody, we get one of those people
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
Late to the party, but openings are incredibly important. Army survival increases exponentially as food differences occur. As long as you're keeping pressure on an enemy, you will continue to magnify your army food advantage until you can wreck your opponent's face.
A 6 on 6 zergling fight will result in (on average) neither side ending up with an advantage. However, having 2 more zerglings will result in you walking away with 3-4 more zerglings. Then next time you fight after 5 larva pop, instead of it being 10 on 10, you're at 14 on 10. This time you've got 8-10 zerglings left over. Next time you fight, instead of it being 20 on 20, it'll be 30 on 20, making an even bigger margin. That'll leave you with an extra 15-20 left over, more than enough to crush someone's base.
Note however, in order to get this exponential increase, you need to bring your army against his at every opportunity. Having a 1 food advantage when it's 4 food vs 3 food is huge, and can easily win you the game. Waiting until it's 101/200 vs 100/200 is worthless. You need to keep pressing against the opponent and forcing him to sacrifice units to your larger army. That's how you maintain the advantage.
Dude, you just don't even know.
2 thors vs 7 mutalisks, you have like 1 or 2 left over maybe.
2 thors vs. 8 mutalisks, you have like 5 left over.
It's ridiculous.
I guess I'm just getting bored of StarCraft. At least Civ V will be out soon!
Beat another Platinum guy, though. It was especially nice since these were the opening comments of the game:
Me: gl hf
Him: stfuy
Him: !@#$
Him: hahaha
Him: crazy
edit: also I built High Templar for the first time ever
Not sure that I have the balls to expand before pool, though. I'm watching a 2 hour recording of his live stream where does this and the first match is him containing a Terran. It's amazing to watch.
SC2 NA: exoplasm.519 | PA SC2 Mumble Server | My Website | My Stream
edit: @corky
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
Despite all of that, I just barely managed to hold off his first push.
edit: replay in case anyone's interested
edit: I guess I'm just disappointed that he's Platinum
I liked your expanding, didn't like you getting supply blocked or not macroing during a lot of fights! Not mining gas at your expo was a bit weird. You should use sentries more against bio it stuffs them so bad. Your cheese scouting was good too, don't forget the destructible rocks in the middle just outside your main ramp though I've seen a lot of korean replays put rax there.
I scouted for cheese purely because of what he said at the start. :P
Have we talked about 5 Roach Rush enough? Probably. But lemme give it one more go. :P
Please try this build if you're struggling with these matchups as Zerg! You will not be disappointed. Here's the exact strategy that I've been using:
13 Pool
13 Gas
15 OL
15 Zergling, make sure there's no scout in your base and then guard the ramp
16 Queen
18 Drone
19 Drone
Shortly after this drone you should have 100 gas; get Metabolic Boost
After starting that research, build a Roach Warren the moment you hit 150 minerals. At this time your Queen should be ~75% done.
As soon as Queen pops, inject and then make an OL (will need to wait a second for minerals, but that's fine)
If you don't know where your opponent is at this point, say farewell to a ling. You don't need to scout with a drone but you gotta find out somehow.
At this point you should be at 19 food (the Warren was made on 20). If you've timed everything perfectly, your larva injection will go off right as your Roach Warren finishes right as your OL spawns and right as you get 125 gas (128, actually). Reinject immediately, then make your 5 Roaches, rallied to your opponent's natural. Follow this up with one OL once you have the minerals (should take ~3 seconds).
Take all drones off gas. Send one to your natural so that you can expand quickly if your rush fails.
From now on your only macro goal is to keep up with injections and food while spamming zerglings rallied to your opponent's base. This should use up all of your minerals. By time your roaches are 1/3rd of the way to your opponent, speed will finish, allowing your mass of zerglings (from the second injection) to arrive fashionably late to the bust. By time your roaches arrive, you should have 18 lings on the field.
Once you're at his base, you want to immediately get your 5 roaches to his wall and knock out the weakest part of it. This is going to be either a supply depot or Zealot(s). Once you've made an opening, all your speedlings pour in and end the game. Play it smart: set your rally to inside his base, keep up with injections, don't suicide lings onto workers. Take out pylons powering gateways. Attack marauders and stalkers with lings, marines and zealots with roaches. Try to keep everything alive, but don't worry about losing your roaches when breaking in; if you make a hole in his wall, they did their job and your lings can win it.
If he manages to prevent you from getting through the wall by having some unholy number of marauders or stalkers, expand and transition however you will. I'm not going to say that you're ahead of him at this point, but you won't be too far behind. That being said, you should very rarely be failing to make a hole; if it's more than 1 in 10 games you should examine why that is.
Welp, that's about it. I'll try to get some new replays up tomorrow of the games I played tonight. Also, because I hate when people leave this out of strategies: I strongly recommend a thumbs down on Desert Oasis, Scrap Station, and Kulas Ravine due to the long rush distances.
Hope this helps some Zergie buddies. If anyone has advice/questions/criticisms about the build I'd love to hear it. Also, I did not of course come up with this build, a guy named Fistdantilus did. I have made some slight alterations to the timing and modified the transition to be all-in zerglings instead of a FE.
/hi5
Protoss has its warp in and zerg have mutas.
A thought.
Bah. They should just give them the upgrade they had in campaign, albeit a little nerfed. Have it require an factory or an armory or something.
I gave the 5rr a ton of chances. Isn't nearly as effective as people give it credit for. Stopped sooooo easily.
It's GREAT if they're going marine/hellion...but I honestly can't remember the last time I've seen a terran do that vs me. Early marauders 24/7.
I've yet to lose to 5rr as toss.
lulz?
Yeah it's the game you should be worrying about then.
I'm guessing that for FoieGras there are a few major issues:
a) In Gold league Marauders seem to be the bread and butter of every Terran, to the point where they sometimes forget to make Marines and stuff. Hard to break a wall when your unit is countered by what's behind the wall.
b) His timings may not be tight enough, or the map may prevent a good enough timing. I have only once been able to get a perfectly timed 5RR off myself.
I have only played a handful of 1v1 ladder games, but the only losses with 5RR were me being dumb and not realizing I did actually have the advantage (like a 4 gate toss that lost all his zealots, then went mass stalker, but didn't re-close his choke - I let him push into my base instead of running lings in). I have easily defeated non-aggressive 2 gate and every Terran seems to not know WTF to do when their wall breaks that early.
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I got beat by a DT toss, followed by a mass voidray toss. Both (BOTH!) I should have figured out from my scouting (I actually was bunkered in to the VR toss base, shooting his stargate with a tank instead of overruning it with marines) but decided to be cute and tech instead of just killing them. That one should be stamped on my brain for a while (after beating a teching VR toss yesterday by building nothing but marines and hellions).
Next two games I solidly beat 4 gate openings with well timed pushes. I'm still working on it, but I've been focusing on upgrades on a low gas terran infantry army with changing the timing of the push to match the map.
Steps of war, I pushed in early (right at expansion time) and build a fall-back bunker that saved the push (while expanding myself of course).
Metalopolis, we spawned opposite corners. I timed my push with the first dropship coming out (had stim and +1/+1 at that point -the armor finished RIGHT as I was engaging, so the timing was as close as I could pull it). His immortal wouldn't owned if I had gone marauder heavy, but a few extra stalkers may have made more of a difference.
I want to play random, but am only going about 50/50 in platinum as it is. I just need to bite the bullet and spend a few nights getting pwned. That said, I've been destroying my non zerg gold-level friends with 5RR zerg variations. And haven't gotten anything but toss v toss by playing random with people I know. And that matchup bugs the hell out of me (I'm not very good at microing zealots, so I usually try to dance until I get hallucinate researched on a few sentries and then use that to try and break them as my 3 attempts at 4 warpgate have been far from flawless).
Re: Reaper past early game
They are very map dependent past early game. Big maps are good, but maps with lots of ledges are even better (alot of space platform style maps).
Midgame, they're great for grabbing towers, harassing expansions, and scouting. They can't stand and fight, and are too expensive to be used as fodder, and are pretty much quickly replaced on open maps by hellions, as the barracks WILL be used to pump out more versatile marines, and better mid-game marauders.
My problem is that half the time I blow it with reapers midgame. They end up doing something cute, like taking out a few gatherers or an extractor, or making the enemy dance back into their main. I basically try top use them like a zerg uses mutalisks, but once they've got armored units with some range, or some air, they get shut down quickly.
I think with the proposed reaper build-time nerf, and the tank being made more armor-specific, something like an expensive mid-game range upgrade (not for the anti-building charges of course) would be nice, maybe to 5.5 to make them a marine ball counter - that may be a bit much, an upgrade to a range of 5 plus one damage may be less OP. I'd say put the upgrade on the ghost academy, but that would be too quick. I'm thinking the armory would be a good spot for it tech-wise.
Origin: Viycktor
Why would you need to guess? I said it clearly enough. Marauders are too common.
The best part is when I casually stroll in to his base to scout and find that he hasn't even walled off and doesn't know what the hell to do doing once his cheeseburger strat has failed. So I go back, calmly mass some zealots with charge, and just walk right through him. Awesome.
it gives me no small amount of pleasure knowing i beat someone who's diamond but doesn't really know how to play the game. :P
That simply doesn't answer the question. It takes 12 seconds for one Marauder to kill one Roach and 8 seconds for 5 Roaches to kill one depot. Timing wise I do not believe it's possible for him to have more than 5 Marauders at the 6 minute mark, and on paper it would seem he'd need about 7.
Do you have any replays of Marauders preventing you from killing his depot?
If you seriously have a 24 game win streak at 1k diamond, you don't need to say anything else to convince me.
Any problems other people are having with this is probably down to not having a tight enough execution of either the build, or the bust.
Which is probably the main reason you are doing so well with it in the first place. If you are doing this every game you will have a huge amount of practice with it. Any aggressive build that is timed down to the second will have a huge advantage over a sloppy defensive one.
I have to admit that it could also be due to the "meta game" or whatever. I hate that term. But anyway, it could be that this is a good build against the sort of strategies Diamond players use but not a good build for actually getting to Diamond in the first place. I'd buy that. It's damn consistent, though.